CARPHA advances One Health and Regional Health Security

THE CARIBBEAN PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCY (CARPHA), said it successfully hosted its second One Health Multidisciplinary Workshop to Promote Integrated Surveillance for Foodborne Diseases and Zoonoses on November 24–25, 2025, at the HYATT Regency Trinidad.

CARPHA noted in a release that food borne and zoonotic diseases continue to pose serious threats to public health, trade, and tourism in the Caribbean. The One Health approach, which integrates human, animal, and environmental health sectors, to effectively addresses food borne diseases (FBD) and zoonoses across the farm to table continuum, provides a sustainable framework to address shared risks and reduce disease burden of FBD and zoonoses. This workshop, funded by CARPHA’s Pandemic Fund grant, marks a major step in moving to operationalise the integrated One Health surveillance systems across the Region.

As a strong testimony of alignment with the One Health theme, a total of 83 persons from 12 CARPHA Member States and 18 regional and international agencies participated; including : epidemiologists, laboratory technicians, veterinary officers, environmental health officers and communication officers from Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago. Also participating were the following multidisciplinary agencies: CARICOM, St. George’s University (SGU); the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD); the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA); the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI); the Caribbean Animal Health Network (CaribVET); the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA); the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO); the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission; the United Nations Environment Programme

(UNEP);The University of the West Indies (UWI) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).

The workshop built directly on the achievements of the 2024 inaugural meeting that developed the Regional One Health FBD and Zoonoses Action Plan, updated National Action Plans (NAPs), and launched new co-ordination mechanisms across sectors allowing real-time information exchange, including the One Health SharePoint digital platform utilized by agency partners. The 2025 workshop advanced this momentum by focusing on hands-on implementation, demonstrating CARPHA’s new Regional Integrated Early Warning and Information Surveillance Systems (RIEWSS), emphasizing the FBD/One health module available for implementation by MS, strengthened inter-agency collaboration for joint implementation, expanded CARPHA’s One Health SharePoint digital platform to include Member States, and conduct of CARPHA’s Tingua multi-sectoral simulation exercise to test Rapid Response readiness for FBD outbreaks.

“One Health is not just a word; it is a way of working,” said Executive Director of CARPHA, Dr. Lisa Indar, as she encouraged Member States to translate planning into action. “This workshop is a call to action. We must move beyond planning to fully be implementing the systems that protect our people, prevent illness, and preserve livelihoods”.

Delivering the keynote address, Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Health, Dr. Lackram Bodoe, reinforced the national and regional importance of the One Health approach and CARPHA’s key role in driving the regional One Health coordination process forward.